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Chapter 1

What Is Apologetics?

Supermarket or Antidote?

In charge of the checkout counter is death itself. After your selection is made, you pay with your life. Whether there is anything outside the exit door and what happens there are the big questions.

produce department. Mind sciences are available in the magazine aisle. There is a person sitting in an empty shopping cart, pushing him- or herself around the store—a Buddhist.

There is another person who can’t find anything in the store at all—an atheist. Some shoppers are strictly vegetarian, some eat only meat, but all the diets are of equal value. They all basically do the same thing—feed you. In charge of the checkout counter is death itself. After your selection is made, you pay with your life. Whether there is anything outside the exit door and what happens there are the big questions.

Is religion really like this, an act of preference where different elements can be mixed and matched at will? Or is religion something entirely different, like an antidote?

Instead of a supermarket, picture yourself in an emergency room with a serious illness. The doctor explains that the illness is 100-percent fatal unless one particular antidote is administered. The doctor then goes on to say that recovery from the illness after taking the antidote has a 100-percent success rate. By this, the doctor is proclaiming that your preferences do not matter at all; they are not a part of the conversation. Whether you like or don’t like to get shots or take pills is irrelevant. This particular ailment has a particular remedy that needs to be administered in a particular way. Do it or die.

The remedy is the remedy—period. As the patient, you must conform your thinking to accept the remedy or face the alternative.

Given this illness and the necessary treatment, a misdiagnosis is dangerous. No one having a heart attack wants to go to a doctor who thinks the proper response is to put a leg in a cast. Proper treatment is necessary no matter how distasteful, inconvenient, painful, or even offensive. There is no going shopping for the treatment you like best. The remedy is the remedy—period. As the patient, you must conform your thinking to accept the remedy or face the alternative.

Christianity properly understood is an antidote, not a lifestyle choice or part of a well-balanced religious view. Like an antidote, it can be painful and inconvenient. It can be socially unacceptable. But most of all, it can be offensive. Most of us would much rather take the supermarket approach where we always ended up with a religion tailored to our lifestyles and preferences and could change as we changed.

But we cannot seriously believe like this. As human beings capable of rational thought, we are obliged to conform our beliefs to reality, not the other way around. Not to approach the world in this way is to create dangerous situations. Before attempting to cross a street we must conform our beliefs about current traffic conditions to what we see around us. If we begin crossing the street because we prefer the street to be free of traffic and because it is more convenient to us, we risk being flattened by a bus. The bus doesn’t care what we prefer or what is convenient. It is our responsibility to respond to the facts of the matter, to conform ourselves to them.

To do this, to form beliefs, we must investigate the world and its issues to discover facts and truths about them. This process, which we all employ, is useful for one simple reason: truth is true whether you believe it or don’t. Truth does not require belief in order to be true, but it does deserve to be believed.

Truth is true whether you believe it or don’t. Truth does not require belief in order to be true, but it does deserve to be believed.

Spiritually speaking, we must gain an understanding of our situation to be able to understand why an antidote is necessary. It is the goal of the law of God to give us that understanding, that diagnosis, and the goal of the gospel of Jesus Christ to provide the antidote. Jesus is not just a cherry-flavored cough syrup that works just as well as the lemon-flavored Buddha. Belief in Jesus is an extremely invasive heart procedure that brings people to life. And it is the only procedure that will work.

But as human beings who would rather be in the supermarket, we must be persuaded to go to the emergency room. We have many objections, barriers, biases, acculturations, conditions, misconceptions, presuppositions, distortions of facts, and any number of excuses. It is the goal of Christian apologetics to remove these hindrances that stand between a person and the cross of Christ.

As a result, some Christians see apologetics as pre-evangelism; it is not the gospel, but it prepares the soil for the gospel.¹ Others make no such distinction, seeing apologetics, theology, philosophy, and evangelism as deeply entwined facets of the gospel.² Whatever its relation to the gospel, apologetics is an extremely important enterprise that can profoundly impact unbelievers and be used as the tool that clears the way to faith in Jesus Christ.

Apologetics Is for Believers as Well

For some, though, apologetics is not discovered until after making a profession of faith. Many Christians did not come to believe as a result of investigating the authority of the Bible, the evidence for the resurrection, or as a response to the philosophical arguments for God’s existence. They simply responded to the proclamation of the gospel. Although these people have reasons for their belief, they are deeply personal reasons that often do not make sense to unbelievers. They know the truth but are not necessarily equipped to share or articulate the truth in a way that is understandable to those who have questions about their faith. It is quite possible to believe something is true without having a proper understanding of it or the ability to articulate it.

Christians who believe but don’t know why are often insecure and comfortable only around other Christians. Defensiveness can quickly surface when challenges arise on issues of faith, morality, and truth because of a lack of information regarding the rational grounds for Christianity. At its worst this can lead to either a fortress mentality or a belligerent faith, precisely the opposite of the Great Commission Jesus gave in Matt. 28:19-20. The charge of the Christian is not to withdraw from the world and lead an insular life. Rather, we are to be engaged in the culture, to be salt and light.

The solution to this problem is for believers to become informed in doctrine, the history of their faith, philosophy, logic, and other disciplines as they relate to Christianity. They need to know the facts, arguments, and theology and understand how to employ them in a way that will effectively engage the culture. In short, the answer is Christian apologetics.

One of the first tasks of Christian apologetics is to provide information. A number of widely held assumptions about Christianity can be easily challenged with a little information. This is even true for persons who are generally well educated. C. S. Lewis had always believed the Gospels were collections of myths like those of Balder, Adonis, and Bacchus. Lewis held this view until he first read the Gospels at age thirty-one. Having read as many myths and legends as he had, Lewis recognized that what was in the Gospels did not fit this literary genre. The Gospels were simple eyewitness accounts of historical events, lacking the artistry of ancient myths.

Other assumptions widely held in our culture can be challenged by both information and argument:

Jesus never lived.

You can’t prove God exists.

There are no such things as miracles.

There is no evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.

The Bible wasn’t written until hundreds of years after the life of Jesus.

What about the books that got left out of the Bible?

All religions basically teach the same thing.

If the God of the Bible is real, how could he allow evil to exist?

What’s true for you is true for you; what’s true for me is true for me.

Christianity is unreasonable.

This is just a sample of the challenges and questions that apologetics training equips believers to answer. And it does so in three ways. First, it shows that while Christian faith cannot be proven by reason, Christian faith isn’t irrational—contrary to reason. This is important because it demonstrates that Christianity is not simply personal preference, a function of how one was raised, or a worldview supported only by emotional considerations. Second, it answers objections against the faith and seeks to remove misconceptions. Third, Christian apologetics not only provides evidence and arguments for Christianity but demonstrates the weaknesses of atheism and other belief systems logically incompatible with historic Christian faith. It offers something far better to replace these worldviews.

The results of training in apologetics are boldness, security, and a lack of defensiveness.

The results of training in apologetics are boldness, security, and a lack of defensiveness. Apologetics enables the believer to engage the world without acquiescing to it and without compromise. Much as the antidote mentioned above that one must understand a virus or poison in order to counteract it, so must Christians understand and recognize the fatal flaws of unbelieving thought, be able to expose them, and provide a more adequate worldview. These are the tasks of apologetics.

Apologetics in the Bible

Some believers are suspicious of and opposed to apologetics. They view it as being contrary to faith. They fear that if Christianity can be shown to be reasonable, then there is no place for faith. This anti-intellectual approach to Christianity is rooted in a misunderstanding of the word faith itself.

The word translated as faith and belief in the New Testament is pistis. Pistis encompasses a number of ideas, all of them revolving around an intentional, engaged trust.

Definitions include firm persuasion, the conviction . . . a firmly relying confidence.³ Lawrence O. Richards notes, "Pistis and related words deal with relationships established by trust and maintained by trustworthiness."⁴ When we trust something, we have reasons for it, evidence that justifies and supports it.

A claim is not true just because we believe it or untrue because we don’t believe it. First, we assess the evidence and reasons for its truth. Next, we weigh the evidence to determine how well supported these claims are. Finally, we trust; we exercise faith based on the weight of the evidence. Faith is not Christian-branded hoping or wishing. Those who embrace other belief systems incompatible with Christianity will often follow this same process. The difference comes down to how each assesses the evidence for its position as well as others. Faith is the product of investigation and deliberation, and reason is its grounding and its backbone, not its enemy.⁵

On the other hand, to believe in something without first seriously reflecting on it or looking into it is not an act of faith; it is an act of foolishness. It is not, as some have held, a virtue to believe something without evidence or reason. Those who say, You just have to have faith, are really proclaiming they have no idea what faith is. The whole point of Christianity is not that we have faith; that is no different from any other religion or worldview. If having faith were the goal, all would be saved since everyone believes something. No, faith itself is not the object. In fact, what differentiates religions is the object of each faith. The content of faith ultimately is what matters. And the content of a faith is what must be investigated and then embraced or rejected.

Christian apologetics is neither a new practice nor unbiblical. In fact, it is not only modeled in the New Testament, but it is also commanded. The Greek word apologia, which is where we get our word apologetics, is used to describe a defense, as in a legal defense or making a case.⁶ In the New Testament, it is translated as defense or vindication as in the following verses:

Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense before you. —Paul before a Jewish crowd as he was arrested in the temple, Acts 22:1

"It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I have you in my heart, and you are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. —Paul, Phil. 1:7

I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. —Paul, Phil. 1:16b

But in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that when you are accused, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame. —Peter to suffering Christians in what is modern-day Turkey, 1 Pet. 3:15-16

The idea of apologetics is assumed in the exhortation of Jude 3 when he tells believers to contend for the faith.

In Acts 17:22-34, we see a picture of Paul practicing apologetics in Athens on Mars Hill.

Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said: "People of Athens! I see that you are extremely religious in every respect. For as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed: ‘To an Unknown God.’

"Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it— he is Lord of heaven and earth—does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. He did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring then, we shouldn’t think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.

"Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed.

He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.

When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him, but others said, We’d like to hear from you again about this. So Paul left their presence. However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

This led him to argue for the faith in two ways. First, Paul found common ground in the fact that his audience believed in some form of religion. The problem, according to Paul, was that they believed in something false, not that they believed in nothing. They had a religious worldview, but it was full of holes. Knowing the egregious flaws in their religious systems, he made a case for Christianity as a belief system in which there is coherence between the Power that created and sustains the universe and the sense of justice widely prevalent in Greek society.

Second, Paul argued based on facts that could be investigated by anyone who was interested. He recognized that if Christianity were true, it must be rooted in facts. Paul saw the contact point in the historical, physical, and temporal aspects of the life of Jesus. Jesus was a real person who did and said certain things in certain places at certain times. Witnesses to Jesus’s life and teaching could be found and questioned regarding these things.

Jesus’s reality—his historicity—is the foundation of Christianity. Without it, there is no Christianity. Paul was so sure of this foundation that he went so far as to point out the most vulnerable claim of the Christian faith:

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say, There is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith. Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified wrongly about God that he raised up Christ—whom he did not raise up, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Those, then, who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone. (1 Cor. 15:12-19)

If Jesus did not live, do, and say the things claimed by the apostles, then Christianity is false. If there is a better explanation for the resurrection, then Christians are simply wasting their time.

By pointing out this vulnerability, Paul was really pointing out the strength of Christianity. So convinced was he of the historicity and verifiability of the resurrection, the event that confirmed the claims of Jesus, that he pointed out how to prove it false—almost as a challenge. Christian claims can be investigated and tested. This challenge has no parallel in other religions. No other sacred text shows how to destroy its own claims.

The church fathers showed they understood the importance of Jesus’s historicity when they crafted the Nicene Creed, the universally accepted creed of the church. The creed says, For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. Why mention Pontius Pilate? What doctrine is based on him? The answer is none; there is no doctrine based on Pilate. He is mentioned to remind us that these were real events happening to a real person at a particular point in history.

Inscription on the Pilate Stone

Many critics of the New Testament understood this and used it as a point of attack, saying that Pilate never even existed, that there was no evidence of Pilate outside the New Testament. That changed in 1961 because of an archaeological find at Caesarea Maritima. A team of Italian archaeologists were excavating the theater there and found an inscribed stone that had been repurposed to be used in a repair. Some of the inscription was still legible and gave the names of Tiberius and Pontius Pilate, as well as the title Prefect of Judea.⁷ As a result, the historicity of Pontius Pilate is no longer questioned.

The importance of the life of the mind was directly addressed by Jesus himself when he quoted the greatest commandment, which is found in Deuteronomy. In Matt. 22:37, Jesus said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Behind Paul’s bold approach is a logic and coherence that empowered him because he understood the importance of the intellect as it relates to faith. The importance of the life of the mind was directly addressed by Jesus himself when he quoted the greatest commandment, which is found in Deuteronomy. In Matt. 22:37, Jesus said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. The Christian life is a balance of the intellect, emotions, and experience. God is the object on which they should all be focused, in which reason is grounded, and that which gives the world coherency and meaning.

Use and Abuse

Two things need to be made clear at this point regarding the use of apologetics. First, the goal of Christian apologetics is not to win an argument at all costs. It is quite possible to win an argument but do it in such a way that it reflects badly on the gracious love of Jesus Christ. Christians are to speak truth in this world, and apologetics is one way believers do that. God could choose to make himself known by knocking everyone to the ground for a few days, as he did Paul. Instead God uses his people as his agents. And as his agents, Christians need to speak the truth in love. Sometimes this calls for using well-formed argument.

Second, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to save people; it is the work of the Christian to bear witness to the truth. The Holy Spirit takes such witness and uses it to open the minds and hearts of those who listen. An apologist is never going to argue someone into the kingdom. Christians need to do their job in an informed and gracious way